Free Fall
by The Black Sluggard
Summary: Disaster has a way of either bringing people together or tearing them apart. Sometimes, it does both... Ryan/Jenny, pre-slash Ryan/Esposito


**Author's Note: **Spoilers for _Den of Thieves_,_ Punked _(minor),_ 3XK_, and _Nikki Heat_. Written for **copper_kestrel**; for **ryanandesposito**'s Secret Santa Fic exchange on LiveJournal (about six months late).

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><p>The mug was still cradled loosely in her hands, though the heat had seeped through the ceramic long ago slowly bleeding out between her fingers. She tried to focus on the still, murky surface of the coffee inside the cup. Though it wasn't the most interesting sight in the world, at the very least it kept her from staring at her cellphone where it waited on the table beside her.<p>

_He has a good reason_, Jenny told herself, though it was mostly unnecessary. Kevin almost never turned off his phone, and when he did it was never without a good reason. He was in the middle of an interrogation. He was working a sting and couldn't afford the distraction. Or perhaps he was just busy with paperwork, and Detective Beckett wanted him to focus.

She told herself these things, but none of them changed the fact that his shift had ended more than three hours ago, that he should have been home at least two hours ago, and that, if he had thought he would be held back at work for even a half hour, he would have called. Each call she made had been shunted immediately to voice mail, and for hours she had been hoping desperately for a response.

She had tried not to get too worked up, but as the first few hours passed without word the silence of the apartment had begun to fill itself with speculation. There had been a brief window in which she'd considered calling the station. For the longest time she had hesitated, worried that her call _there_ might block Kevin's call _in_. A creeping sliver of dread had crept up under her skin, leaving her reluctant to call at all, too afraid of the answer.

It was nearly midnight when her silent vigil was interrupted by the shrill chirp of her phone. She stared at it dumbly for a few seconds as though she'd never seen it in her life, but the sight of Kevin's name on the display cut sharply through the daze. Cold coffee and sick anxiety churning in her stomach she answered the phone.

"_Jen?_" She sound of his voice over the line sent a craze of electricity through her chest and, though his voice was thin and shaky, a powerful rush of relief that left her stumbling for words.

"Christ, Kevin, I- What- " She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to focus through the urgency of her thoughts. "Where _are_you? Are you okay?"

"_Me? I, yeah. Yeah, I'm fine._" She could imagine the wince, hear a helpless note of apology creep into his tone. "_Shit, Jenny, I'm so sorry. I'm fine, I should have called earlier, I know, but I-_"

He fell silent, though a soft sound carried over the line, half-heard, filling her belly with ice.

"_I'm at the hospital Jen. It's Javi. I- God, Jen... I don't know if he's gonna make it._" The pain was thick in his voice, a tight ache settled in the well of her throat.

"Kev, stay put. I'm coming to get you."

She stayed on the phone with him all the way down to the street, though he made her hang up for the drive. He had told her the address, details dropped with a wrenching, despondent numbness. The streets were packed, leaving her the whole of a long, slow drive to worry about how he really was. He had said he was fine, but what did that really mean if his partner was dying?  
><em><br>Possibly dying_, she corrected, trying to maintain a positive attitude. Even if the circumstances proved truly grim Kevin would need it.

She had only met Detective Esposito a handful of times, yet she half felt she knew the man. He was certainly an important part of her fiance's life. Every night when he came home, the first thing out of Kevin's mouth was something crazy that had happened that day, which almost always proved to be something that Javier had said that day, or something they had done together. She loved to hear him talk, his energy and enthusiasm had been one of the first things that had drawn her to him, falling hard and fast. Given the craziness of his schedule she had been somewhat disappointed at Kevin's inflexibility about the boys' gaming night. Though it was difficult for her to complain. The way he looked forward to it every week was simply precious. How he had managed to keep that sweet nature in his line of work had always baffled her...

She couldn't help the thought that losing his partner might harm that innocent piece of him that other horrors of his job had somehow left untouched.

Her first anxious scan of the waiting room nearly missed him, hunched over in a hard plastic chair, and her steps stilled as she took in the sight. The right side of his forehead was plastered with a gauze bandage, below it a dull bruise stood out against the pale skin of his cheekbone. Though his face had been washed mostly clean, blood still flecked his left ear and lined that side of his neck with darkened, crusting streaks. The shirt beneath his jacket had been stained from blue to a ruddy brown. His face when he looked up at her was paper-white, bleached looking in the fluorescent light, he seemed wrung out, transparent.

Kevin stood quickly, arms crushing her close to his chest. He was unsteady on his feet, and his height nearly toppled her over. She clung tightly, even as her relief threatened to knock her own knees out from under her.

"How is he," she asked when he finally stepped back, certain what was at the forefront of his mind. Kevin shook his head uncertainly, lowering himself back into the chair.

"I...I don't know. They took him in for surgery hours ago." He raked clawed fingers through his hair roughly, trying to think. "I forget how many. I saw his mom...she must be with the doctors now. _Shit..._"

He swiped a hand over his mouth, staring at the sterile tile at his feet. Jenny could practically see the speculation writing itself behind his eyes. She lay a hand on his shoulder, giving a gentle squeeze to try and pull him out of his own head.

"What happened?"

"I, uh..." He blinked emptily for a few moments, running fingertips lightly over the bandage on his face. "It was a case. Beckett and Castle were going to approach a suspect in his apartment on 16th, but the guy saw 'em and made for the fire escape. We were a few floors down, keeping an eye on things. Beckett called down, let us know the guy was coming. Instead of going down to catch him in the alley Javier and I went through another apartment to reach the fire escape and try and stop him..."

He gave a weak snort, looking helplessly into his hands.

"Only, he stopped _us_." He concluded blandly.

Jenny had spent most of the night in silence, and would give almost anything to break it now. But, for the life of her, she couldn't think anything to say. So she sad beside him, arm loosely linked with his, as they waited. It was perhaps another hour before they had any word. Esposito's mother, Jenny soon learned, was a surprisingly small, frail, ragged looking woman, though the last she was certain had entirely to do with the circumstances. Her lips were tightly pressed, as she listened to the doctor who accompanied her down the hall, hands wringing a frayed tissue between her thin fingers. When Kevin saw them he stood. She barely looked up at his approach, but reached out to take his arm. With his support she seemed to release herself, appearing far less brittle.

The doctor was saying something about internal trauma and broken ribs, and the possibility that the fall could have aggravated the spinal injury he suffered earlier that year, but that right now it was still too early to tell. Mrs. Esposito gave a short nod in response to the doctor's words, her composure belaying the faint, shining tracks that stained her face.

"Magdalena, I'm so-" Kevin's voice was achingly small, and it didn't take more than a pat of her light hand on his where it held her arm to stop the words in their tracks as he lead her to a seat.

"If you try to apologize, Kevin," she said flatly, "I may _have _to give you a smack."

Oddly, it managed to coax a feeble smile out of the man.

"Go home, _m'ijo_," she said, lifting her hand to his cheek for another soft pat, her lips pressed in a worried line. "I'll make sure they let you see him tomorrow."

It wasn't a suggestion Kevin seemed prepared to argue with. Jenny was relieved and grateful, having doubted she could have talked him into leaving by herself. Even then he was reluctant, a light pull on his arm needed to lead him out the door. The drive home nearly managed to be the most surreal moment of that night. Kevin was so quiet and still. The energy she was so used to seemed to have abandoned him, the eyes staring distantly out the window at nothing at all devoid of their usual bright warmth.

When they reached his apartment it was well past three in the morning, both of them feeling drained beyond measure. A hasty wash removed what it could of the blood and dirt. She remained a while in the kitchen. By the time she had finished, joining him in the bedroom, he was stripping out of his clothes, getting ready for sleep if sleep would come. When she set down the mugs on the bedside table he managed a ghost of his old smile. He slid his arms around her shoulders with a deep sigh, letting go the exhaustion he'd been carrying all night, his face dipping forward to bury itself against her neck. They sat together, backs propped against the headboard, until her own weariness carried her away into sleep.

She woke up the next morning to an empty bed and a short note, apologizing. He hadn't wanted to wake her.

Jenny didn't see him the rest of that day, or into most of the next. They had a short phone conversation where he'd apologized again, this time for going straight to work from the hospital. Beckett had texted him about a lead on the the suspect that had almost killed his partner, and he was going to get that bastard. She saw him for a few hours on Tuesday when he slipped in around 2 am for a change of clothes and a shave. She'd woken up long enough to glimpse him in the bathroom as the water ran in the shower. He had offered her a weak smile, but he looked painfully fragile, his eyes rimmed with red.

By Wednesday, Detective Esposito still hadn't woken up.

It was actually Richard Castle who called her late Thursday night to give Kevin a ride home from the hospital. Later it would occur to her that, under any other circumstances, talking with the famous author would have been an exciting prospect. At the time, she was simply relieved that someone else was watching Kevin's back while his partner couldn't.

Jenny arrived at that hushed hour where the hospital didn't sleep but it's mechanisms ticked along in as close to silence as one could imagine, the lights in many of the rooms dimmed. She found Kevin in a chair at Javier's bedside. The low light cast solid shadows on his face that left his cheeks looking hollow, yet his face was more peaceful than she'd seen all week, his shoulders lax and free of their prevailing tension. There was no way of knowing how long he'd been asleep, and she had seen too little of him to know for sure, but if forced to guess this was probably the most sleep he'd had in days. It made her very reluctant to wake him. Checking her watch, Jenny figured she could easily afford another hour and a half. If the nurses hadn't disturbed him by now, they wouldn't any time soon.

He was slumped over so, gently, she placed a hand on his shoulder to sit him back more comfortably in his chair. A sound sleeper, she didn't expect the action to rouse him. She wasn't wrong, but her efforts met an unexpected moment of resistance. It was only for a moment that she glimpsed their hands clasped loosely before Kevin's slid into his lap, fingers curling slowly around the loss. Jenny lay his jacket over his front like a blanket, standing back to examine his face quietly, trying to make sense of her sudden, nebulous feeling of dismay.

There was a soft sound behind her, a faint rustling that nearly failed to catch her attention. She turned, mind taking several seconds to process the fact that Javier was awake, expression vaguely confused as he pawed muzzily at the mask covering his nose. A few shocked seconds ticked by before she could react intelligently, putting a hand on his arm as he reached for the monitor clip on his hand. He looked up at her suddenly, brows drawn down above unfocused eyes.

"_No el ángel yo esperaba..._"

His voice was hoarse and almost inaudible, and the words triggered a storm of painful, dry-sounding coughing. It shook her out of her daze long enough to press the call button. She turned back to replace the oxygen mask on his face, but his hand closed loosely around her wrist. His eyes, though fogged with pain, seemed a little clearer, and she saw a dull spark of recognition. And fear.

"Kev?" He asked, his voice rough, and hardly more than a whisper.

"He's fine," she managed after a tick of confusion, realizing suddenly how it must have looked for it to be _her_there at his side.

The man settled back, a breath of weary relief fogging the mask that covered his face. As she watched, his eyes slid slowly closed, and by the time the nurses came he had slipped back into unconsciousness. The doctor on duty assured them that this was normal, that Javier might be in and out of consciousness for several days before coming out of it entirely. Still, she said, it was a very positive sign, and Jenny's account of his lucidity encouraging.

When they got home, Kevin slept like the dead.

He didn't get to talk to Javier until Saturday, though Magdalena called him at work Friday afternoon to let him know she'd spoken to her son. Jenny knew this because it was the first thing out of his mouth when he came home. As she listened, drinking in Kevin's smile as he told her about the conversation, her throat ached. It was like she'd gotten back a part of him she'd lost.

Javier was already awake when they came to the hospital the next day, arguing tiredly with a nurse about the drug drip. When he saw Kevin enter the room, he gave an exhausted smile. The nurse took the distraction of their arrival to make his escape, promising to find a doctor to finish the debate. Kevin pulled up his chair, leaning in to speak with as subdued a form of his usual enthusiasm as Jenny had ever seen. She found herself lingering in the doorway, watching. The way Kevin touched his partner's arm as if reassuring himself that he was really _there_, awake, and in front of him. The way Javier fought his sluggishness to brush something from Kevin's jacket with a smirk.

It all felt surprisingly intimate, and she, strangely, like she was intruding.

A while later, Kevin left to track down a doctor with some questions. Jenny remained, quietly seated in a chair against the wall with her jacket folded on her lap, not quite knowing what to do with herself.

"He looks like hell."

Pointing out to Javier just how ragged _he _looked seemed about the most pointless thing imaginable, so instead she said nothing. Still, a nod of the head seemed such a mild way of acknowledging that her fiance had been killing himself by inches over this man for nearly a week. It didn't make a lot of sense being angry at Javier for that, but it didn't seem she could help it. It made her feel like a very small, petty woman.

"He's blaming himself for this, isn't he? Somehow."

Jenny hadn't gotten that impression, but looking back on the rest of the week, it made a lot of sense.

"Maybe," she answered, diplomatically, more certain now of the thoughts working through Kevin's head than her own. "He doesn't handle helplessness very well."

Javier shut his eyes, resting his head on the pillow with a light snort.

"Dumbass." Though the word was said so softly as to be almost silent, she could hear his concern nonetheless.

And that was how she met Javier Esposito, all over again.

She wasn't sure why, at first, but Jenny found herself making the time to accompany Kevin on his visits as often as she could. Once or twice, when he was busy working the case, she found herself going alone. She told herself it was to get the measure of the man. Looking back on her past experiences, which were unfortunately few, Detective Esposito had struck her as a terse, prickly sort. At least, he hadn't seemed to have a lot to say to _her_. Nearly everything else she knew had come from what Kevin had told her, which, given his willingness to talk about anything and everything if given half the chance, was actually quite a lot.

There had been exceptions, God knew, an evening or two that stood out in her memory where he'd come home with little more than a nod and a kiss goodnight. Generally it was something he'd run across at work, some heinous piece of the world's of ugliness that had hit him especially hard. Normally, he would recover on his own. Given time to digest whatever had happened, he'd finally come around to his usual bright self. Once, however, it had stretched on for almost a week, that unusual silence, eating his personality away as this week had done, coming home one night with the sharp tang of alcohol on his breath. It had been shocking to see him that way, he was normally so careful. He had moved beyond it eventually, but it seemed whatever had caused his black mood was a topic he did not intend to revisit.

Not with _her_, at least.

Javier, it turned out, wasn't quite the unfriendly sort she'd judged after their first few awkward meetings. Having lost his battle with the nurse regarding his dose, he became even less so. As a consequence, Jenny learned a great many things that Kevin had never shared with her. She learned that Javier's mother made some excuse to meet any officer partnered with her son at least once. And that at their first meeting Magdalena-_Mama_-had been less than impressed with Kevin, and swore that if he let anything happen to her boy, she'd smack him so hard his first born would carry the handprint. He had managed to get in good eventually, though to this day Javier never could figure out exactly how, and she'd almost come to regard him as her other son.

Occasionally the topic did wander away from Kevin Ryan, though given the man was nearly all the two of them had in common, it usually didn't wander far.

"I get it, now," he said one evening, a slight frown dragging at the corners of his mouth. This following a brief lull in their conversation-one of their more convoluted cases involving a former partner of his named Thornton. Jenny had been confused, and found herself rewinding mentally to see if she'd missed something, but it was also following a rough day of scans and the pain, drugs and tiredness had made that conversation less than linear.

"He was so mad at me, after that. So mad he couldn't look me in the eye, sometimes. Then he got over it, like he always gets over it...but I never really knew what he was over. Not 'til the Triple-Killer came along, and I had to come up those stairs not knowing what I'd find. An' he was just...just _lying_there, and Castle was saying he needed an ambulance..."

He wore a troubled expression, grey smudges underneath his brown eyes made them look very dark.

"Then I fucking _got_it... He needed me an' I shoulda been there for him, and he just wanted to be there for me...'til the wheels fall off." His eyes shuttered in a heavy-lidded blink, the frown deepening slightly.

"I just...don't like the idea of losing him 'cause I'm not there," he said finally. Whether it was the note of guilt, almost unheard beneath the soft slur to his voice or the slow, guarded way way his eyes refocused on her face, she didn't know if it was the words he wanted to take back or who he'd spoken them _to_. Silence crept in to replaced their conversation, thick, and cloying. Drowning in it, Jenny found herself forced to confront thoughts she had been fighting for over a week to keep at arms length.

Kevin picked her up from the hospital that night after visiting hours were over and Javier had been dragged back into unquiet sleep. The ride home was tense and silent, but now it was Jenny who was left wrestling uncertainly with her thoughts, though if Kevin noticed he said nothing. She knew he was disappointed to have missed his window again that day, and to make matters worse, Captain Montgomery had asked him to step back from the case once their suspect was safely in custody, lending an edge of unfulfilled anger to the restless quiet filling the car. It followed them into his apartment, weighing her down almost physically by the time she brought enough clarity to her thoughts to speak.

"If there were someone else, I'd have to tell you that, right?"

She realized it was probably the wrong way to start this conversation the moment it came out of her mouth. By then, naturally, it was too late, and the hurt looking back at her from Kevin's eyes couldn't be put back in the bottle. She watched painfully as he turned the question over in his head.

"Hypothetical-someone or _someone_-someone?" As quiet as the question was, she could hear the apprehension squeezing his throat.

"Both? Neither? I don't..."

She paused, taking a seat on the sofa. Though her mouth opened several times to speak, it took the longest time to get anything out. The doubts that had been brewing in her mind were a thick coating on the back of her throat. Shutting her eyes briefly, Jenny took a slow breath before she looked Kevin in the eye and asked the question that had been lurking in the undergrowth for almost a week.

"Are you in love with Javier?"

"I-" The response hung as he processed her words, face stricken blank by confused shock. "_What_? What kind of question is that?"

A few seconds clearly let him compute the situation further, her serious expression and eyes beginning to tear from frustration. He sat down slowly on the seat next to her. He lay a hand gently on her arm, leaning in to speak to her softly.

"Jen, I- I would _never _cheat on you. I could never do that to you."

"I know. I _know_ you wouldn't, Kevin. You're too good a guy for that." And she did believe him. Whatever else she'd been blind to, it was nice to know she hadn't been _that_stupid.

"But," she said finally, nervous tongue wetting her lips, "that's not what I asked."

What comfort she might have taken from Kevin's initial stunned expression melted off as she watched his eyes dropped away from hers. He braced his elbows on his knees as he leaned forward, a hollow weight of dread settled in her stomach. He exhaled slowly, scrubbing both hands over his face.

"And maybe it's not fair, Kevin," she admitted, fighting a quaver in her voice with all her strength, because she was just _not_ going to sound hysterical, "maybe it's not fair, for me to be upset when you haven't done anything wrong, but... If you are in love with someone else, that isn't fair to me _either_."

He was silent for a while, frowning down at the hands clasped loosely in front of like he expected they might have answers he didn't. If her attention hadn't been focused so thoroughly on his she would have missed the slight motion as he shook his head.

"I don't know." His voice was quiet, tight with uncertainty. His eyes searched the nothing in front of him almost blindly. It wasn't a confession, but it was an acknowledgement of _something_, and they both knew it. A possibility she thought she was prepared for, she realized with a sting that she had been painfully mistaken. Her eyes screwed shut with the effort of simply breathing past the pressure tightening in her chest.

"Does...does _he_..." She honest to God had no idea how to articulate what she was asking. Thankfully-perhaps-it didn't seem she had to.

"I don't know," he repeated, the distressed edge on his voice falling a note shy of desperation. "I- He's...he's not exactly out at work. And he's not...it's not like he'd just come out and say it if he..."

"But you knew," Jenny supplied, words falling haltingly into his silence, the way pieces were falling together in her mind, "You know. That he's gay."

There was a flinch at the word-just around the eyes, his jaw flexing like he wanted to dispute the term-but his head bobbed in an almost imperceptible nod.

"You never said anything."

He responded with a half-shouldered shrug. His hands twitched in his lap.

"I didn't think it was a big deal," he finally managed in a lame whisper.

And the thing was that it _shouldn't _have been a big deal. It wouldn't have been, except for the part where it apparently _was_. The part where he'd been content to tell her almost everything else. In the that was really what decided it.

The ring slid off her finger with deceptive ease, and Jenny found herself wishing there had been more resistance-in every conceivable sense of the word. The cold, empty spot where it had lived on her hand left her feeling naked. The tears were already falling from her eyes by then, but it wasn't until she slid her hand along the length of his arm, pressing the ring into his palm that her breath caught in a sob. When he stirred-to pull away, to push it back, she wasn't sure-she gently curled his fingers closed.

"No, Jen-"

She shook her head, stopping the words before his voice could fully break with a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth. Forehead resting against his she managed to bring his eyes to meet hers, and stung with redness she thought they'd never looked so blue.

"I need-" She sniffed, steadying her breathing, her voice, her thoughts. "I just need some time to think. I think we both do."

She ran a light thumb over his knuckles, felt the pressure growing there as his grip tightened around the ring before she continued, shakily

"But...until you can answer those questions, I think you should keep this."

His breath hitched and she saw his eyes screw closed, dropping the tears he'd so far held back. Eventually he gave a weak nod. With a hand on his cheek she drew him in to press a brief kiss to his lips. And then she drew away. And then she stood. And once the door shut behind her it took almost everything she had, but she didn't allow herself to look back.


End file.
